Preparing Peers to Practice Better Teaching: SLU Undergrads Launching New Journal

For over a year, rising senior Abby Beals has been working to put the power of SLU student research on equity in education into practice. In doing so, through a new, undergraduate-led peer-reviewed journal, she hopes to help her peers prepare to be better teachers.

Now, Beals and a team of SLU and Butler University students are preparing to launch the open-access, online journal, Discovering Power in Practice. The journal is set to go live later this month.

The journal will be a resource for undergraduates who want to inform their teaching practices with research on race and social justice in education.

Mentored by Lauren Arend, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Education, Beals and the journal’s team worked out submission guidelines, edited and vetted four articles by SLU alumni that will appear this month. The articles by Jessica Lazzara (Ed '16), Alé Krudop (Ed '16), Stephanie Kaefer (Ed '16) and Sophie Varvares (Ed' 16) focus on racial identity, the school-to-prison pipeline and school desegregation in St. Louis.

Unlike a traditional academic journal, Discovering Power in Practice is written, reviewed and published by undergraduates for undergraduates. An awareness of the political and socio-economic structures impacting students drives the journal’s mission, Beals said.

“We’re hoping it will be a platform for student voices that will hopefully provoke conversation regarding equity in education,” she explained. “These articles will push pre-service (student) teachers to think about ‘what is my role in changing these structures,’ and ‘what is my role as a teacher to advocate for my students so they have a positive educational experience.”

Beals, who plans to major in elementary education with a minor in special education, became interested in equity issues in education early in her SLU career. As part of the Urban Education Learning Community, she took part in conversations about the role of teachers as bridges between schools and communities. She went on community walks and learned about the ways policies, laws, housing access and other issues impact children’s time in school.

“That’s one of the things that have led me to strive to be a critical educator,” Beals said. “I believe the creation of this journal is especially imperative as education policies and issues continue to impact the daily work of classroom teachers. Teacher preparation programs must strive to do more in developing pre-service teachers who are critical, reflective and culturally relevant.”

After her learning community experiences, she learned of the research underway by students undertaking capstone research under Arend’s direction. The 2015-2016 capstone class completed work. Afterward, Beals, then a sophomore, approached Arend about developing a way to share the knowledge created by SLU students outside of the course.

“We were all sort of lamenting how I was the only one who would see these projects,” Arend recalled. “As we talked, we talked more about the perennial problem – where only the professor sees these really great papers. This is a really good way for students to persist with teaching as a scholarly endeavor.”

While peer review and journals are staples of pedagogy in higher education, Arend explained, the same is not always true to teachers engaged in day-to-day teaching in elementary and high schools. It is unique in education, according to Arend, for undergraduates to create a resource like this from the bottom up.

“They are more thinking of it as a provocation of ‘I want to read that source,’ or ‘I want to learn more about that,’” she said. “There are a lot of stereotypes about education majors. In teacher education … you’re always fighting this tide of teachers not viewing this work as an intellectual undertaking.”

The process of putting together a formal journal, Arend said, has been an apprenticeship of sorts for those involved. Beals spent the 2016-2017 school year reviewing other peer-reviewed publications, working with fellow editorial board members to form submission guidelines, copy-editing and going through submissions.

Making critically-examined and well-researched information available to other undergraduates and young teachers was critical to the project, Beals and Arend said. A forum like the journal is meant to help students and those new to education “build that community so when they enter the field, they know what it means to be scholar practitioners,” Arend noted.

“They provide a really unique perspective and really force us to think outside education in St. Louis,” Beals said. “Something we wanted to come out of this is that we reach outside (Saint Louis University) and have other undergrads reading and taking this research outside their course work in order to have more conversations about these issues.” The editorial board’s goal is to reach a national readership, according to Beals. More collaboration with students outside of SLU are possible. For Beals, working with students of Arend’s colleague Cathy Hartman, an instructor of elementary education at Butler, has enriched the journal’s creation.

“I believe the creation of this journal is especially imperative as education policies and issues continue to impact the daily work of classroom teachers. Teacher preparation programs must strive to do more in developing pre-service teachers who are critical, reflective and culturally relevant.”

Abby Beals, SLU senior and the journal's managing editor

Editorial board member Jen Graf, a junior majoring in elementary and special education, concurred.

“This journal represents students coming together in the hopes that we can create a space for addressing topics related to teacher preparation that will help undergraduates come to better understand their own pedagogical thinking,” Graf said following the journal’s May 9 board meeting, which included fellow SLU student Jonathan Ruterbories, and the three board members from Butler.

With her own education and future career in mind, Beals said the process of creating Discovering Power in Practice honed her skills as a future educator and has challenged her in new ways.

“I thought it was just editing and publishing and it was just that simple,” Beals said. “I think the journal has provided me with confidence, with working collaboratively, and with finding my voice to speak about critical education.”